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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between poverty and technical efficiency (TE) of paddy farmers in presence of their heterogeneous selling behaviours. This paper explains how such behavioural heterogeneity affects this relationship in south-western Bangladesh.

Translog production frontier model was used to estimate TE since it fitted the data set better. On the other hand, poverty indices were constructed by using P-α method. Then, multinomial logit models examined the existence of heterogeneous selling behaviours. It revealed adequate evidences in favour of behavioural heterogeneity. Finally, the authors employed a series of two stage instrumental variable regression models to relate poverty and TE with and without considering the behavioural heterogeneity.

The study finds that around 18, 39 and 44 per cent of households exhibit autarkic, non-wholesaling and wholesaling behaviour, respectively. Market failure due to transaction cost and credit constraints leads to emergence of such heterogeneity. Across these heterogeneous behaviours, impact of improving TE on poverty status significantly differs. Without controlling behavioural heterogeneity, TE significantly improves the poverty status of the rural farm households. However, scenario is changed after controlling this heterogeneity. After behavioural segregations, TE improves poverty status only for wholesalers. In contrary to prior expectation, it worsens the poverty situation for both autarkic and non-wholesaling households. Simultaneous failure in both credit and product market for these households might be the plausible reason behind this heterodox finding. Credit market failure compels these households to borrow from local money lenders with costlier terms. This effort might improve their TE. But, product market failure makes their additional production due to improved TE unsold. Thus, repayment of credit directly reduces their consumption expenditure. Therefore, an effort to improve TE might increase prevalence and depth of poverty when market failure exists. Henceforth, the improvement of TE appears as an effective policy instrument only when households exhibit wholesaling behaviour.

The earlier studies show the relationship between TE and poverty status but did not account behavioural heterogeneity. The authors attempt to overcome this shortcoming and show how market failure induced behavioural heterogeneity affects the effectiveness of TE on improving poverty status of farm households.

This study analyzes farmers' preferences for agricultural credit and its market structure in rural Benin using the conjoint analysis approach.

The data used come from primary sources collected from 228 randomly selected farmers. The conjoint analysis approach was used to produce the results. The bias associated with the heteroscedasticity of the error terms was fixed using the weighted least squares estimation method. Agricultural credit markets were segmented using the Calinski algorithm.

The study results reveal that farmers prefer a long-term agricultural credit with a low interest rate received via mobile banking. The interaction between a type of credit with collateral and a low interest rate is positively correlated with farmers' credit demand. The authors also found that agricultural credit markets are heterogeneous because of the heterogeneity in farmers' credit demand. This result has led to three different rural credit market segments identified in the selected study's sites. The market share simulation reveals a significant market share for the type of credit preferred by farmers in two segments.

The proven evidence from this study can guide the development of appropriate agricultural financial products that promote financial inclusion among farmers in rural Benin. More specifically, agricultural financial policies that promote digital long-term credit with low interest rate and appropriate guarantee mechanisms can promote financial inclusion among farmers and reduce the problem of asymmetric information in agricultural credit market. The study also calls for the promotion of differentiated policies across the three identified segments in order to positively impact the welfare of all farmers.

The use of agricultural financial products that include digital long-term credit with low interest rate and appropriate guarantee mechanisms promote financial inclusion and reduce asymmetric information problems in agricultural credit markets in rural Benin.

The promotion of long-term digital and cheap credit improves farmers household's wellbeing in rural Benin.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the structure of rural credit markets. It also reveals the most preferred characteristics of rural credit profiles by farmers. Besides, it validates the importance of the use of guarantee as an appropriate mechanism which minimizes the problem of asymmetric information between financial agents and farmers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how credit access affects the welfare of households and sheds light on how household characteristics influence the decision to take credit and the efficiency in credit use.

This study uses data from the fourth round of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey conducted in 2009, and examines factors that determine the decision to take credit and the effect of such decision on household welfare. The household welfare variable is measured by the food security indicator and total food expenditure. The study employs endogenous Regime Switching model to account for endogeneity in access to credit and self-selection bias in the decision to participate in credit.

The result from the kernel distribution shows households with access to credit have more consumption expenditure than those without access to credit. The ordinary least square regression shows that access to credit increases total consumption by 12 percent without considering self-selection bias. Participation in non-farm activity increases the demand for credit by 17 percent. Land holding, household size, and participation in saving associations increase the probability of getting credit by 5, 11, and 20 percent, respectively. Access to credit appears to have a positive impact on food security in both actual and counterfactual cases for the current credit receivers.

This study provides a thorough analysis of the impacts of access to credit on household welfare in Ethiopia. The study contributes to the debate on the link between access to credit and household welfare and provides valuable input for policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of credit constraints on agricultural productivity in China.

Using data from a rural financial survey, a switching regression model is used to account for endogeneity and heterogeneity. Carter presents three ways that credit might affect the production functions; a shift along a given production surface by allowing an optimal level of inputs, a shift the production surface out by allowing the purchase of more efficient inputs, and the third is to increase net revenue by more intensive use of fixed inputs and resources. Thus, the effects of factors on agricultural productivity may not be independent of credit status; therefore, separate functions for credit‐constrained and non‐constrained households are examined.

Empirical estimates of the impacts of credit constraints on agricultural productivity are provided for the Heilongjiang province, a major agricultural production area, in Northeast China. By removing credit constraints, average agricultural productivity was estimated to be increased by 75 percent. Under credit constraints, labor inputs, along with a farmers' education, cannot be fully employed because of an inappropriate mix of inputs.

Young farmers may not be able to leverage their comparative advantage for physically intensive farm work under credit constraints. Because of data limitations, the research does not include information on informal credit in the estimation, which may underestimate the effects of credit constraints.

This study provides an analysis of the impacts of credit constraints on rural household productivity for the Heilongjiang province, a major agricultural production region, in Northeast China.

Constrained input use and lower productivity of rural establishments may be associated with restricted or concentrated access to financial resources, especially in developing countries. Meanwhile, agricultural activity entails risks associated with the volatility of net cash flows and external events, which may discourage riskier but higher return investments (e.g. technology). As rural credit can alleviate the former, and rural insurance may help alleviate the latter, the combination of both policies might endorse each other. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of rural credit and rural insurance policies with respect to productivity and crop area, in São Paulo state, Brazil, using farmer's microdata from two surveys realized in 2007/08 and 2016/17.

This study uses propensity score matching and the entropy balance approaches in a complementary way. This study compared three policy treatments – rural credit, rural insurance and both policies combined, against establishments that received neither one. The analysis considered sugarcane, grain and grape crops separately and employed farmer's microdata. Moreover, the analysis was stratified into two categories: establishments owned by family farmers and those that did not.

Rural credit policy is related to higher productivity and larger cultivated area for grains and only to larger area for grape crops in the last analyzed period (2016/17). Rural insurance, as a unique policy or combined with credit, is related to higher productivity and cultivated areas, for all analyzed crops, only in the second period (2016/17), as the policy became more accessible to farmers. Heterogeneity regarding crops and farmers might influence the effectiveness of these policies. Despite rural insurance being related to a better performance regarding the outcome variables, it still reaches a small share of farmers, especially when combined with credit.

Many studies about the effectiveness of rural credit in Brazil have been conducted throughout the years, while there have been fewer studies regarding rural insurance since it became an important policy in the mid-2000s. However, few studies have conducted an analysis comparing its individual and interactive influences, with such level of disaggregation, on a farm-level database, considering the heterogeneity of the data and the different categories of farmers.

The purpose of this study is to elaborate the theoretical mechanism of rural credit input affecting the urban–rural income gap from the perspective of labor transfer, and use a dynamic panel mediation model to test the transmission mechanism of rural credit input affecting the urban–rural income gap through labor transfer, so as to provide an empirical basis for narrowing the urban–rural income gap in China.

This paper constructs a mechanism analysis framework for rural credit input affecting the urban–rural income gap. From the perspective of resource allocation and labor transfer, the authors expound the transmission path of rural credit input to the urban–rural income gap and analyze the theoretical mechanism of rural credit input that affects the urban–rural income gap through labor transfer. Based on this, this paper uses the dynamic panel mediation model to test the effect relationship between rural credit input, labor transfer and urban–rural income gap in 31 provinces of China from 2009 to 2018.

In theory, increasing rural credit input can ease the financial constraints on the development of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” and provide capital accumulation for the development of rural non-agricultural industries. The development of rural non-agricultural industries can provide more jobs for rural surplus labor, thereby increasing the labor rate of return in rural areas, and ultimately conducive to narrowing the urban–rural income gap. Further, increasing rural credit input can improve the development level of rural non-agricultural industries, thereby promoting the transfer of agricultural labor. At the same time, rural credit input based on the intermediary variable of labor transfer has a significant inhibitory effect on the urban–rural income gap.

This study mainly focuses on the relationship between rural credit input, labor transfer and urban–rural income gap, so it is impossible to use micro-level data to further verify the impact of rural credit input on labor transfer. At the same time, the collection of indicators of rural credit investment in the China Financial Yearbook only started in 2009, which limited the number of samples to a certain extent.

This paper assumes that the economy is mainly composed of urban and rural economic sectors. Therefore, labor can flow freely between urban and rural areas. However, in the near future, China's rural secondary and tertiary industries may develop rapidly, especially with the in-depth implementation of rural revitalization strategy, it is very important to pay attention to the current situation of rural industrial structure and incorporate the factors such as rural industrial structure into the existing model.

This study attempts to provide a new perspective and inspiration for rural credit input, the optimal allocation of labor force and narrowing the urban–rural income gap under China's rural revitalization strategy.

Based on the analysis framework of neoclassical economic theory, this paper uses the constant elasticity of substitution production function to establish an urban–rural two-sector nested model that includes credit supply variables and analyzes the mechanism of rural credit input affecting the urban–rural income gap through labor transfer.

The purpose of this paper is to study land title’s credit effect from a financial inclusion perspective in China. The focus is both small land holding and poor farmers. Formal and informal finances are considered to test their differences in land title’s credit effect.

The authors use augmented inverse-probability weights of the doubly robust method to test the effect of land titling on the rural credit market by addressing self-selection, endogeneity and heterogeneity concerns.

Results show that the poor, non-poor and small land holders with land titles are willing to borrow more from formal financial institutions. Land titling increases loan accessibility for non-poor and small land holding farmers. As for informal financing, large land holding and non-poor farmers show a decrease in informal lending. Land titling has a financial inclusion effect for some farmers, but poor farmers’ credit restrictions are not entirely solved by land titling.

This is the first study that focuses on the financial inclusion effect of farm land titling in China.

The purpose of this paper is to model credit rationing among farmers in rural developing areas, based on micro level data of Kano State, Nigeria.

A total of 835 households and 45 microfinance banks were utilized as the samples of the study which were selected using multi-stage stratified sampling technique. Multinomial logit model was used to estimate the factors that determine credit rationing among the rural farmers in Nigeria.

The result of the discrete choice model shows that farmers who are either being engaged in subsistence farming or trading have a significant effect on credit rationing with the greatest impacts found on the farm profit and farmers’ location.

This study failed to carry out a dynamic analysis regarding agricultural credit rationing. Also, it is well known that formal credit interacts with informal credit sector; nevertheless, this interaction was unaccounted for in this study. Therefore, future studies can expand the scope of this research to account for this interaction. In fact, investigating heterogeneity among credit providers will be an important topic in the future.

Clear and sound policies are required for the establishment of new agencies and financial institutions devoted to agricultural sector. Similarly, an integrated system of forward-looking policies based on tax and subsidy-regimes to augment desired incentives for private financial sector and NGOs to lend money to the farmers are needed.

Consistent with risk-balancing theory, the good story for farmers is that profit making farmers are less likely to be among the constrained borrowers. It turned out from the credit rationing model that urban farmers had a greater chance of being successful applicants in the Nigerian agricultural credit market. In comparison to farmers at periphery, urban residents are less likely to be associated with being constrained borrowers.

In the presence of credit rationing the poor are unable to exploit growth‐promoting opportunities. Using data gathered from a household survey on North China Plain, the purpose of this paper is to find pervasive rationing in the highly regulated formal credit market in rural China. The subsidized credit policies favor local elites instead of the targeted poor strata and earmarked credit programs are less effective. By jointly estimating credit rationing in both the formal and informal sectors, this paper elaborates on the fragmented rural credit market in China where different borrower segments are systematically sorted out across different loan types. Non‐targeted credit programs cannot address income redistribution or sustainable poverty reduction in the presence of such skewed equality and equity.

The basis of this study is a multi‐topic household survey data on rural households in the North China Plain, with 337 rural households being randomly sampled out of five purposely selected counties. The particular objectives are to identify the determinants of credit rationing in both formal and informal sectors, to show the extent of credit rationing by using Probit model, to explore the substitutability of institutional and informal lending by using bivariate probit specification.

First, there exists pervasive rationing in the highly regulated formal credit market in rural China. Second, the subsidized credit policies favor local elites, instead of the targeted poor strata; and the earmarked credit programs are less effective. Third, informal credits, in a form of reciprocal arrangement, are weak substitutes for institutional loans. Different segments of borrowers are systematically sorted out across different loan types; the rural credit market is fragmented. Fourth, government‐led credit programs are not effective in promoting agricultural investments; credits of rural non‐farm activities facilitate agricultural transformation.

Since 2004, the policymakers in China initiated a set of policies towards promoting agricultural and rural development to spur the rural economy and ease tensions in rural area. Credit policies, believed often to be efficient and guided tools to provide financing to investors, gained a great deal of appeal. Given the widely existing failure of government‐driven rural credit programs in many other developing countries, how the interventions affect the rural economy in China should be investigated. However, little has been done to explore the interventions on smallholder farmers and the existing evidence is therefore pieced and anecdotal. This paper aims to fill that gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine smallholders’ preferences and willingness to pay for microcredit products with varying attribute combinations, in order to contribute to the debate on the optimal design of rural microcredit.

Data used in this study are based on a discrete choice experiment from 552 randomly selected respondents. Mixed logit and latent class models are estimated to examine the choice probability and sources of preference heterogeneity. Endogenous attribute attendance models are applied to account for attribute non-attendance (ANA) phenomenon, focusing on separate non-attendance probability as well as joint non-attendance probability.

The results demonstrate that preference heterogeneity and ANA exist in the smallholder farmers’ microcredit choices. Averagely, smallholder farmers prefer longer credit period, smaller credit size, lower transaction costs and lower interest rate. Guarantor collateral method and installment repayment positively affect their preferences as well. Moreover, respondents are found to be willing to pay more for the attributes they consider important. The microcredit providers are able to attract new customers under the current interest rates, if the combination of attributes is appropriately adjusted.

This study contributes to the debate by assessing the preference trade-off of different microcredit attributes more comprehensively than in previous analyses, by taking preference heterogeneity and ANA into account.